I live in Hertfordshire, just north of London, England, with my two children. I’ve loved reading and writing stories since I was a child. I’ve always been fascinated by communication issues and did voluntary work from my late teens with children with disabilities, including deaf-blind children and children with cerebral palsy. I had the idea of writing a thriller in which the person who knows the identity of a murdered is unable to communicate, and Jemma and ‘I Have No Secrets’ was born. As I began to write, Jemma’s voice felt so strong I felt almost as if she was dictating the book to me.
As well as being an author, I have worked as a teacher, a support teacher for hearing-impaired children, a reading recovery teacher, an adult education teacher, a teacher of adults recovering from mental health problems, and currently as a Creative Writing tutor for adults at City Lit in Covent Garden, London, where I run a ‘Writing for Children Workshop’ and other courses.